


Flowers

by annies_hoodie



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F, day 2 of mikaani week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-12 23:22:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11747316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annies_hoodie/pseuds/annies_hoodie
Summary: I'm a day behind but I'M GONNA CATCH UP I SWEAR. This is for Day 2 of Mikaani week (Flowers), in which Annie and Mikasa make a flower crown. Annie's POV





	Flowers

Annie crushes the flower crown under her heel, grinding the petals and twigs into the ground. She can feel the interwoven sticks cracking, thinking of bones, thinking of the ligaments in her father’s knee snapping when her kick had landed too hard. The scent of the wilted flowers mingles with the damp, musty mud in the ground, and Annie thinks of dirt, dirt everywhere...up her nose, in her eyes, coating the inside of her mouth as she plows face-first into earth after a rare loss in combat. She wonders when she started relating everything to training. Why everything she sees, everything she tastes, smells, experiences...reminds her of countless hours of rigid punches, kicks and strict regimens intended to hone her into a weapon. Maybe, she thinks, it’s because fighting, and preparing to fight, is all she’s ever known. Sometimes, she wonders if she will ever have the chance to know something more. 

A tough shove from behind causes her to trip forward, and she whirls in anger, berating herself for getting lost in her thoughts and sacrificing awareness of her surroundings. Her father would be disappointed. She sees her assailer, Mikasa, on the ground, pawing through the grave of torn pieces of flowers and twigs that Annie had buried into the ground.

“What’s wrong with you?” Annie says brusquely to Mikasa. She wonders if she should kick the other girl into the dirt in retaliation for shoving her. She decides against it. 

“You ruined Sasha’s project,” Mikasa replies bluntly, icily. She stands up with what she was able to salvage, wayward grains of dirt falling through her fingers like sands through an hourglass. Annie sees that she’s managed to unearth the skeletal remains of the once flourishing crown fashioned by Sasha, it’s wilted oval shape limp and crushed in Mikasa’s hands. 

“It was distracting her. There’s no use fawning over something so superficial.” Annie looks at the crown with contempt. 

“She was making it for Krista,” Mikasa tells her, admonishment lacing her words. 

Annie barks a sharp, cold laugh. “Even worse. Krista’s not going to last long. She’s weak, small. Quiet. She’s a dead girl walking. Titan fodder. Sasha’s work would have gone to waste.”

It’s exceedingly harsh. Annie has nothing against either Krista or Sasha. She respects their camaraderie, admires their passion, and envies their humanity. She doesn’t think they’re bad people. She thinks they have potential to be decent fighters one day. There’s a part of her that feels like they all could have been friends in another time and place. If things were different. But under the circumstances they lived in, and considering Annie’s mission, she rarely allowed herself to humanize them. It would be detrimental to her state of mind. If she ever hoped to return home, she couldn’t think of the rest of the cadets as anything but obstacles in her way to success. So when she speaks of them, she’s careful to never betray any hint of warmth. 

Mikasa’s lip curls. She takes a step closer to Annie. Annie can smell the metallic, muted must of old sweat on her, amplified by the cold air. She sees danger in her matte gray eyes, her stare sharp, hard and hot. The combination unsettles her, but she doesn’t make any movement to relay it. She meets her gaze, hoping she can unnerve Mikasa with just how little she feels, how little she cares. 

Out of all the cadets, Mikasa’s the only one Annie considers a challenge. And not just on the sparring grounds. Mentally, emotionally she feels as if they are always at a stalemate because they are on equal ground. Annie thinks Mikasa is broken too, because she can see her eyes become empty hollows when she thinks no one is watching her. She sees the life drain out of her rigid posture as her limbs deflate, as if the fire that keeps her blazing all the time has been extinguished. She sees the loneliness, the isolation painted across Mikasa’s features as she watches over the other cadets eating, laughing and dancing in the hall. Like Annie, she doesn’t fit in. She has a higher purpose than all of them, and it inevitably separates her. She’s been through more than they all know. More than they want to know. And she’ll always be different...feared, even...always an outcast, because of it, a feeling Annie knows all too well.

Even after a few long moments, Mikasa doesn’t waver. Instead, her eyes travel down to Annie’s nose, to her lips, to her hands at her sides, clenched into fists. She doesn’t speak. Annie swallows, thickly. She feels like she’s being analyzed. She probably is. She wonders what the other girl is thinking.

When Mikasa looks back up at Annie, her face is still grim, but her eyes are softer somehow...tempered steel cooled to a light, faint charcoal. Annie wonders what changed. Had she seen something in her, like Annie so often sees a piece of herself in Mikasa?

“Help me.” Mikasa says. 

Annie is surprised. “Excuse me?”

“I know you’re not hard of hearing,” Mikasa says, tossing the crown at Annie. More dirt shakes loose as it flies through the air and lands into Annie’s hands. “You ruined it, so you’re going to help me fix it.”

Annie doesn’t speak. 

“Let’s go,” Mikasa commands, hitting Annie’s shoulder with her own as she barrels past her. Annie has nothing else to do, so she follows. 

Mikasa doesn’t look behind her as they walk, and Annie takes the time to study the hard lines of her body. While Annie had been honed into a weapon by someone else, Mikasa had molded herself into a killer. She wonders why Mikasa trains so hard. Why she seems to care for nothing except for perfecting her own skill and protecting Eren. Was it all she had left? 

“Here,” Mikasa stops. Annie realizes that they’re on a bluff, tufts of white, pink and blue flowers peppering the thick, green grass. They are the flowers Sasha had woven into the crown. 

Mikasa throws the battered crown onto the ground. “We have to recreate it exactly so that she doesn’t know you ruined the original.”

Annie makes no move to gather any flowers or plants. “I don’t see why this is necessary.”

Mikasa doesn’t look at her, a breeze swaying the tips of her red scarf, a stark, bold swatch of color against the hushed cool earth tones on the bluff. “It’s important to her.”

Annie finds it hard to care. So what? It was important to Annie to go home and return to her father. To complete her mission so that they could both live in peace. Finally. Hopefully. A flower crown being important to someone seemed trivial and ridiculous in comparison. She had better things to do with her time than placate Sasha. 

“It’s not my problem,” Annie says. 

Mikasa scoffs. “You made it your problem when you mashed it into the ground for no reason.”

Annie bristles with annoyance. “If it’s such a big deal to you, do it yourself.”

Mikasa shakes her head, almost imperceptibly. “Do you hold nothing important to you, Annie?”

Annie fixes her eyes to the ground. Of course she did. But she would not tell that to Mikasa. “No.”

Mikasa looks at her, expressionless, and turns her eyes towards the sky. “Surely, you have some empathy. I know you’re not as cold as they all think you are. You’re different.”

Annie’s heart beat quicks. She runs a finger over her ring. 

A silence permeates the air between them. Blades of grass sway, and the leaves of the trees move in time with the wind. Finally, Mikasa looks at Annie. “We are all here for different reasons. We all go to bed and wake up in the morning with something, someone on our mind. Maybe it’s a promise...maybe it’s a hope of a better tomorrow. Whatever it may be, these kids live every day knowing they could die at any moment. Knowing that their chance of survival is incredibly low. Yet they still get up every day. Because they have something to live for. Whether you do or not, don’t deny them of the simple pleasures that bring them temporary happiness. I don’t care if you think it’s stupid or not.”

Annie is stunned. It’s the most she’s heard Mikasa speak in the entire time she’s been behind the walls. 

Mikasa seems surprised at herself, as she pulls her scarf up and kneels to the ground. She doesn’t look at Annie again, instead, she begins carefully picking flowers from the ground, gathering them into a small pile near her boots. 

Annie plays with the strings of her hoodie uncomfortably. Not knowing how to respond. She doesn’t really think she should...Annie knows Mikasa’s right. She had no good reason to destroy Sasha’s work; it was born from apathy, of Annie wanting to take her anger out on anything that made someone else happy, anything that she deemed frivolous. But Sasha had done nothing to her. Annie realized she had been unreasonable. She had been wrong. So she decides to listen to Mikasa. And she knows the other girl is not interested in words, only actions. 

She walks a few steps away from her and crouches, running her hands through the grass, waiting for her fingers to catch on wayward twigs and branches. She finds a rhythm, collecting a hefty mound of foliage before beginning a search for some long grass blades to use for weaving. She can feel Mikasa’s eyes on her as she stands up, surveying the ground with precision to find the perfect threads. She forages near the forest opening, stripping some greenery to form the base of the crown. When she looks over her her shoulder, Mikasa is watching her, and Annie looks away abruptly as a blush dusts her cheeks. 

“Annie.” Mikasa calls to her, and she turns around. 

“Come back, I think we have enough.”

Annie gives a curt nod and stoops to pick up her collection before joining Mikasa on the grass. She drops her findings unceremoniously next to Mikasa’s careful pile of flowers. She thinks she sees Mikasa’s lip turn up ever so slightly into a smile. 

Annie stares at the pieces, realizing she has no idea how to make a flower crown. “So...what are we supposed to do with all of this?”

“It’s easy,” Mikasa says. Of course. Everything is easy for her. 

The black-haired girl plucks a strand of greenery and ties it into a circle. It looks big and lopsided to Annie. “That doesn’t look good.”

“Shut up,” Mikasa says, but there is no malice in her words. Instead, she leans over to Annie and carefully lowers the loop onto her her head. “Hold still.”

Annie is frozen solid. Mikasa’s face is very close as she fastens the crown base to fit Annie’s head. Annie forgets to breath. The moment is over as soon as it began as Mikasa pulls the loop off, satisfied with the shape. Annie feels her palms sweating. 

“Take a flower and fasten it to the base,” Mikasa instructs her, watching as Annie wipes her palms on the grass before picking a flower. “Are you okay?”

Annie’s reply is curt. “I’m fine.” 

She works quietly, fastening a few flowers to the base before she accidentally ties too hard, snapping the base. She curses herself, throwing the crown down. “I broke it.” 

“No, you didn’t.” Mikasa picks up the crown, examining the break. “Give me a blade of grass.”

Annie does as instructed, watching as Mikasa calmly and quickly joins to the two ends of the base into one, mending them with a tie of grass. Her fingers are nimble, the loops impossibly tiny, her hands impossibly gentle as she makes the crown whole again. Annie is hypnotized. 

“Anything that’s broken can be fixed,” Mikasa says. “Keep working.” 

Annie doesn’t break a single flower the rest of the time they work, and they finish just as the sun begins to set. An orange hue washes over the landscape, dousing Mikasa’s features with warm colors. Annie watches the loose strands of jet black hair that hang over her eyes, tickling her nose. She watches as Mikasa swipes them away haphazardly as she concentrates on the finishing touches. 

“”It’s done,” Mikasa announces. “But...I have to test it.”

Annie looks at her blankly. “How?”

Mikasa wordlessly shifts over to Annie, until they are just a few breaths apart, and places the crown on Annie’s head. Annie’s heart swells. It feels...nice. She feels special, having Mikasa’s attention like this. Having Mikasa act like a...friend. Her friend. Something Annie has never had before. She’s grateful, as Mikasa looks at her, nodding approval. Mikasa’s face is a mask but Annie sees the warmth in her eyes, sparkling as she looks into Annie’s eyes. Annie feels like she’s not alone, just for a moment. 

Mikasa averts her eyes and swallows, takes the crown off. She scoots back, and when she leaves the tenderness goes with her. Once again, Annie is just a lonely, lost girl. A warrior. None of these people are her friends. Mikasa is not her friend. Annie could not let herself forget that. 

“We should go back now,” Mikasa stands up. She walks over to Annie and offers her a hand. It’s the first time she’s ever done it. But Annie had already let herself fall just a little too deep. 

“I can get up myself,” Annie says gruffly, pushing up off the ground. 

Mikasa rescinds her hand, starts walking. Says nothing. Again, Annie trails her, watching her as she moves. When they are close to the dorms, Mikasa says thank you. 

 

Annie doesn’t reply. 


End file.
